The Provincetown Players and the Culture of Modernity [Paperback]

A study of the most influential theatre group of the twentieth century, the Provincetown Players.The Provincetown Players, a consciously literary and experimental theatre group that flourished in Greenwich Village from 1916-1922, is known for discovering and nurturing such playwrights as Eugene O'Neill, Susan Glaspell, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. This book places the Provincetown Players in the context of American culture in the period around World War I, particularly the developing culture of modernism, by detailing the art and thought of the Players, who included some of the most significant modernist poets and artists of their time and place.The Provincetown Players, a consciously literary and experimental theatre group that flourished in Greenwich Village from 1916-1922, is known for discovering and nurturing such playwrights as Eugene O'Neill, Susan Glaspell, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. This book places the Provincetown Players in the context of American culture in the period around World War I, particularly the developing culture of modernism, by detailing the art and thought of the Players, who included some of the most significant modernist poets and artists of their time and place.The Provincetown Players was a major cultural institution in Greenwich Village from 1916 to 1922, when American Modernism was conceived and developed. This study considers the group's vital role, and its wider significance in twentieth century American culture. Describing the varied and often contentious response to modernity among the Players, Brenda Murphy reveals the central contribution of the group of poets around Alfred Kreymborg's Others magazine, including William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Mina Loy and Djuna Barnes, and such modernist artists as Marguerite and William Zorach, Charles Demuth and Bror Nordfeldt, to the Players' developing modernist aesthetics.Preface; 1. The founding: myth and history; 2. The first plays; 3. Others and the other players; 4. GlaspellsŒ